INTERVIEW: Audrey Nicoll, Torry/Ferryhill's New Councillor

Following Thursday's by-election (21st November) to vote in a new councillor for Torry/Ferryhill, it was announced that the SNP had comfortably retained their seat. Audrey Nicoll, a nursing lecturer at Robert Gordon University and ex-police officer with years of community engagement behind her, now joins SNP's Christian Allard, Conservatives’ Alan Donnelly and Yvonne Allan in representing the ward.

Governing Grampian sat down to talk with Audrey about the experiences which have lead her to step into politics and what she hopes to achieve as a councillor.

With a variety of past roles to reflect on, how will these experiences relate to your new role as councillor for Torry and Ferryhill?

"I worked across the whole Grampian area but I also worked across the divisional uniform out-and-about policing role as well as being lucky enough to hold a number of specialist roles and through that, I would say looking back, I built a lot of experience, skills and knowledge about public protection. Following retirement, four years ago, I came across to RGU to work on a project and then once that project was ended I was based in the school of nursing where I still am. I was fortunate enough to be able to stay in the school and support the development of nurse education."

What made you decide to run at the by-election?

"Over the years iv'e been interested and followed politics in Scotland in particular and i'd certainly been thinking about it for some time but I had quite a heavy caring role to a young family, my very elderly father and a severely disabled relative. Knowing the potential time constraints that a role in politics can impose on you, it wouldn't have been feasible at that time for me to take that on. That caring responsibility has changed over the past year, so that has allowed me to start thinking about being serious about moving into a role in local politics - walk before you can run".

What do you see as the most important matters to address in Torry and Ferryhill?

"Ferryhill and Torry are really different areas. For Torry, I would say probably there are two or three main issues; the first one is the plan to build a new incinerator, an energy recycling

plant. There are still some real concerns in the community that the impact of that around pollution, around noise, around the benefit to the local community from the sighting of the plant in that area. Connected to the plant, there are concerns about infrastructure in and out the plant that will impact residents. The other issue is the new harbor - similarly, around access in and out of the harbor and the proposals around the access routes. There's also a lot about how attractive we can make Torry as a destination of choice because of course the plan is to encourage tourists, so how do we go about making Torry and other parts of Aberdeen appealing".

Another thing you've said you want to do is reestablish the Torry/Ferrhill community council which disbanded earlier in the year, how do you plan to do this?

"Having had experience in my former role in policing of how community councils function and why they exist and the importance of them as a voice in the community, for me the reestablishing of the community councils is a priority. How you do that, you have to really get to grips with what went wrong that made them no longer active."

As an ex-police officer, what do you make of the Prime Minister's pledge to recruit thousands of new officers?

"The first thing I would say is the commitments he's made around putting more cops on the beat, that relates to England and Wales. The responsibility around policing numbers in Scotland sits with the Scottish Government so with the risk of sounding a bit cynical, it's a bit of a soundbite and it certainly has come on the back of some high profile issues that MP's and the public have raised about anti-social behavior, crime trends and so on. It's all very well to say "right lets put ten, twenty thousand more cops on the street"; for me the questions would be where are you going to recruit them from? because recruitment takes tine, training them takes time and it costs a lot of extra money".